(1875-03-11) Rowena's Advice
Rowena's Advice
Summary: Uncertain what to do with an opportunity that will change everything, Dertan asks Rowena for advice.
Date: 11th March 2019
Related: 1875-04-14:baron-coning, 1875-03-05-dertan-s-opportunity.
NPCs: Nope
Players:
Rowena  Dertan  

Somewhere near/in Dalcen
{$roomdesc}
1875-03-11

It's been a rather dull morning along the banks of the salt. Not even the colourful language of the various shipwrights, nor the constant din of hammer and saw, could erode that. The sort of day where a sailor itches to be out on the water with the salt spray in their hair. Alas that is not to be. Instead Rowena gets a visit from a somewhat grave looking Dertan. He's dressed much as expected - today he's wearing that silvery blue brocade doublet. The expression probably isn't much of a surprise either. It is not like he usually looks happy. "Rowena." He finds a little smile as he ducks his head in greeting. "If you can find the time. I would very much like to discuss something with you." he pauses a moment before deciding that perhaps he should actually add a little more. "It is a personal matter."

Rowena would have very much liked to have been down there in the middle of it all, helping the shipwrights and such members of her crew who had skill in wood-crafting in the work and toil that came with rebuilding nearly an entire fleet of ships. But her duty and her desires rarely seemed to coincide these days, and she found herself only watching the work being done, settled at what had been designated as the central meeting place for those planning and implementing the building. The glimpse of a familiar figure out of the corner of her eye turned her head, and the smile she offered was wider by a long measure to the one Dertan offered her, but it soon faded into concern, "Dertan, of course. My time is yours. What's troubling you?"

Dertan's reply comes with a gesture towards one of the paths that winds away from the work site. "I have an important decision to make," he explains. "and I would very much appreciate your opinion on the matter." He glances to her concerned look. "I do not think you will consider it a bad thing Rowena."

Rowena nodded, at Dertan's gesture, stepping away from where the shipwrights who were coordinating the building were working, footsteps carrying her down along the path, back towards the land and away from the castle before it would eventually return. In the spring and summer, the path would have been a marvel of beauty. Now…it was a bare echo of what it would be, "Perhaps not, Dertan, but it clearly troubles you. But you know I will always offer my opinion when you ask for it. Well," she continued, lips curling into a faint trace of a smile, "I offer it even when you don't. So, tell me what is troubling you."

Now that the pair are walking Dertan relaxes a touch. "Baron Coning is very ill," is the first bit of information that he confides. "And he has suggested that he would like me to become his heir."

Rowena's expression flashed with sympathy at the news of the Baron's illness, "I'm sorry, Dertan, I didn't know. I should have done, but I have been so busy here." And then the rest of his words hit her, "That, it would be a good choice," says Rowena, who, quite likely thought her Cousin was a good choice for quite a good many things, "But would that not conflict with your duties to Kaedon?"

"He has been hiding it." Dertan replies to her apologies. "I doubt that you would have noticed even if you had spent a month in his presence. I certainly could not tell." He is quite for another moment. "When I mentioned the possibility to Sonya, her first thoughts were of the military and trade gains. It is one of the concerns."

"Of course she would," was Rowena's crisp response. But she did manage to keep her expression placid as she listened, "And what are the other concerns?"

"I wish I could say I was surprised by her response." Dertan answers to Rowena's clipped response. He thinks about Rowena's likely response to his words before deciding they must be said for this conversation to have its required outcome. "I am not sure I believe that Sonya thinks me capable of it." He gives a small shake of his head. "I do not expect I will ever understand her. All I know for sure is that she has done exactly what I feared she would do on her return and that my role in Kaedon has been reduced to little more than an accountant."

There is a moment where he pieces together the second question. "The main personal issues with taking on that role would be the added workload and the conflicts it will cause between me and my family. However there are other issues. I am not sure that it is something the duchy or the kingdom should actually accept. Kaedon is already powerful enough that the Queen has felt the need to display her might towards us."

Rowena, for a wonder, actually listened to Dertan, rather than offering the sharp response that came to her lips, as the discussion turned to Sonya. "Dertan, you know that I love you. You are more dear to me than my own brothers, save Jarret. You are one, so far as I am concerned, so I say this to you with all of the love I possess for you. There is a reason they call her the Serpent of Kaedon. Her ambitions, her need to seek always for power and influence over others is a poison in those lands. She has spent all of the years you have been married to her keeping you at her heel. Not as her husband, but as a pet that she throws scraps to whenever it pleases her, but only if you do what she bids you. The time that she was gone was, in my eyes, the best months of your life since my Mother sent you off like some sacrifice to her. You were never her equal. I do not believe she has it in her to view anyone as her equal, but only her lesser and only for her to use."

The walk continued, despite the conversation, or perhaps as a result of it, "It is time for you to step out from under her skirts, Dertan. And if you cannot do this with Kaedon, then you may have to consider doing it alone. You are meant for greater things than that. These last months have proved that."

"Yes." Dertan says softly. "I see that too Rowena." he looks at her. "If I could still convince myself that she was the more talented of us then I don't think we would be having this conversation." He grimaces, glancing out towards the water. "How do you actually weigh up something that you desire for selfish, personal reasons, compared to what your duties and responsibilities?" He looks back at her at the end. "I have even thought about asking Jarret for a divorce."

"You have always been her equal, Dertan. She was never your superior. The only difference between you and Sonya is that your skills are different. Not one lesser and one greater. And I am glad that, whatever the cause was, that you have had a chance to learn that. To see what Jarret and I see in you." Rowena shook her head, looking over to her cousin, "Everyone makes selfish choices, Dertan. No one is truly selfless in this world. There is nothing wrong with wanting something for yourself. And you are not doing this only for yourself. I know you too well for that. You had looked, always, before and after Sonya, for a way to make these lands better than they are, to make us stronger and more prosperous. And that benefits all of us, not just yourself." As for the divorce, "You would be better for it, I think. Being free of the weight of someone else's foot on your neck."

Dertan gives Rowena a brief and grateful smile at the complimentary statement. "I did not have the experience nor confidence to be her equal at the start. It is the last year, when I took the reins of the House, which have given me that." He gives a short agreeing nod. "Our skills should be complimenting each other. It is such a tragedy that we can not even attempt to split the responsibilities for the County." His look turns completely serious again. His words holding enough actual feeling behind them that there is no doubt, for once, of his sincerity. "There are things afoot that make me genuinely afraid for Kaedon's survival and yet I have been actively forbidden from even offering an opinion on the matter. I am trying to step aside and do nothing, as I've been ordered, but it is causing me a fair bit of distress. I can not stand being stuck between two decisions which both seem equally right." he pauses a moment and then adds. "It seems wrong to abandon the ship without even bailing." he pauses another moment and adds a slightly more awkward. "And I think we can both agree that simply wishing to be independent of your liege is a dreadful reason for a divorce."

"I know you well, Dertan. Did I not nip at your heels at every opportunity, until your knight stole you away from me?" Rowena was still a bit sore about that. But nevermind. "The reason you cannot split the responsibility, is not because of your lack of trying, Dertan, it is her unwillingness to be anything other than what she is and what she wishes to be. You cannot be faulted for that. You can, however, be faulted for being unwilling or unable to see that and to follow that road to where it ends. You have spent all of your married life bailing out that ship, and it is still sinking. Not by your own poor design but hers. And you are not simply looking to be independent. You are wishing, as we all wish, to be better than you are and to seek your full potential. You will never find that if you remain where you are." A beat, "What you are."

"You always did know just what to say to make me feel better." Dertan gives Rowena a little smile. "Even if it does sometimes feel more like a slap than a comfort in the initial moments." A thoughtful silence follows after which he says. "It sounds as if you think I should take the position and also use it as an opportunity to escape my marriage."

"As much as I hate to make the admission, Dertan, I am also only what I was born to be, and I am, in many ways, my mother's daughter." And Isabella rarely knew how to offer a kind word to anyone. Rowena, at least, had inherited some of her father's grace. "Sometimes, situations require a gentle hand. At others, less so. A slap, not to punish, but to wake the senses." And then, a nod, "I think both of those things. You must take this opportunity to become everything that you know, and I believe you can be. And you must escape the shackles that are keeping you captive."

Perhaps Isabel was like Rowena at Rowena's age and only got the famous bite later.. Dertan gives a slow nod at Rowena's certain answer. "I have to consider more than just me." he says. "But you are right. It is the only path that will allow me to have space to find what I am truly capable of." A pause. "Do you think it is truly impossible to keep the two houses apart from each other should we remain married?"

"Of course you do. This not an easy path, but I believe it is the right one." Rowena paused, as she walked over to one of the trees, reaching up to pick an apple which had not fallen in the harvest, but has been frozen to the branch in winter, bringing it back to where she had been walking with Dertan. "It looks perfect, doesn't it?" Rowena allowed the fruit to warm slightly in her gloved hands, before she tightened her grip on it, the flesh, long since gone to rot oozing out from between her fingers like a seeping wound. "This is what lies at the heart of Kaedon, Dertan. A beautiful thing on the surface, that is filled with disease in its core. You will never be free of Sonya, should you remain married to her. She will always seek to control you and to take all that you are and all that you have and everything you might become and twist it to her own ends."

Dertan stares at the apple for a long moment before lifting his head to study Rowena. "That is unfair Rowena. She is flawed but she does much of what she does to achieve, what is quite possibly, an unachievable goal. I respect her for standing by it even when I question her methods." He lifts his hand to touch the rounded head of a medallion somewhere under his doublet and shirt must rest. "The more I learn of the Many the more convinced I am that Kaedon must survive." He glances to Rowena. "I do however suspect that I can achieve that more easily from another point within Sokar than i can from within its forests."

"My mother also had great ideals, Detain. But that did not stop her from almost destroying nearly everyone she loved, and very nearly bringing us all to ruin. A person does not have to be wholly evil to do evil. And the most evil of men and women, are those who believe they are working in the light and bastion of good. If you seek for another example, look to Duke Tarris. Look at all that he wrought when he believed he was fighting for the right. And now, the Queen seems to have forgiven him, but his acts were and are not forgotten. You will, I have no doubt, in the end, make your own choices, but I tell you, as one who loves you, that you have the potential to turn this into an opportunity to do great things, to be a great man, even better than you are now, and to save all that you love and would keep. The religion of the Many and the people who follow it. And in so doing, you will protect the lands."

Dertan can do nothing but nod at the examples given. Yet he could do nothing but defend a woman he has such complicated feelings about. "This has been a great help to me Rowena. I have such complicated feelings when it comes to both Sonya and Kaedon. I needed this talk." a serious look to her. "Thank you."

"I would think you a liar and call you so if you did not. She is your wife, for what little good that brought you and the mother of your children. It is not an easy thing to set those aside, or to choose a path that takes you from what you have known for so long. Especially when you gave so much of yourself to save her, only to be rewarded in such a fashion." Rowena stepped aside, cleaning her hands in a drift of still lingering snow, and crisped winter grass, before she returned, "I am always here if you need to talk, Dertan, you know that."

Dertan reaches to touch her arm. "I know Rowena. It is something I am deeply grateful for."

If Dertan had been anyone else, Rowena might have embraced him, but this was Dertan, and so, Rowena simply reached out, placing a hand over the one he set on her arm, "You are my family, blood and kin, Dertan, I will always be here if you need me. And if you were lost, I would seek to the end of the world to find you and bring you home."

Dertan gives her a smile. "I should go and consider what we have discussed. The wood is already being dispatched but it will take quite a while to move given our inability to use the great salt."

Rowena nodded, stepping back from her cousin to allow him to take his leave, "Of course, Dertan. I will be here if you have need. Send a moongazer, if you cannot come yourself. And perhaps, when you are next here, I will show you the horses, and you may have one for yourself, if you find any that you fancy."

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